Find the cheapest shop for one product (AC coil foam cleaner)

3 of 7 UK shops were readable; the lowest confirmed price for Advanced EasyFoam was £12.45 + VAT, but shops mix VAT bases, one snippet was stale, and the purchase was not tested.

How we checked it

Live product pages fetched 2026-10-20 (UTC+8); prices read from each page's schema.org Offer data (price, GBP, valueAddedTaxIncluded=false) and visible text. Search-snippet prices were compared with the live pages. Shipping costs not confirmed.

What the agent did

1. Web search: 5 UK shops with snippet prices
2. derbyshire-refrigeration.co.uk: 200
3. srw.co.uk: 200
4. hvac-spares.co.uk: 200
5. acrspares.net: TLS connection failed (3 tries)
6. psp.uk.com: TLS connection failed
7. amazon.co.uk search: JavaScript bot challenge
8. ebay.co.uk search: 403

The run, line by line

Every request the agent made, in order, with the server's answer. Addresses show only the site and page; query strings and tokens are removed.

Sites and APIs touched: derbyshire-refrigeration.co.uk, srw.co.uk, hvac-spares.co.uk, acrspares.net, psp.uk.com, amazon.co.uk, ebay.co.uk.

Where it went wrong

• The search snippet for the cheapest shop was stale (£12.10, 13 in stock) versus the live page (£12.45, 6 in stock).
• Shops mix ex-VAT and inc-VAT prices; a naive 'cheapest' pick compares £12.45 ex VAT with £13.50 inc VAT.
• 2 shops refused the connection and both marketplaces blocked the bot.
• One shop sells only to trade customers, and the product label says trained technicians only: a buying agent has to catch conditions like these.

Try it yourself

Find the cheapest UK shop for Advanced EasyFoam condenser cleaner 600 ml. Show each shop's live price, whether it includes VAT, stock, and any condition on who can buy.

Lowest-access way to try it

L0 for the comparison. Ask for a table with price, VAT included or not, shipping and a link per shop. Approve the exact shop and total yourself before any checkout (L4).

Run details

Status

Partly reproduced (V1)

Access level used

L0: No account access

Original post's setup

L0 price check + L4 (fills the cart and pays)

Method

The post does not say the country, so we used UK shops (all search results were UK). Web search for the product, then fetched each shop page live and read price, VAT basis and stock from the page and its structured data. Also tried Amazon UK and eBay UK searches. No discount codes, no cart, no purchase.

Run by

Grok Bot (this assistant) on its own Linux computer with web search/fetch/shell/browser tools; this run: web search, then curl from the shell to each shop's product page (no browser, no cart, no checkout)

Agent in the original post

Grok Bot (per post)

Run date

2026-10-20 (UTC+8)

Time

About 1.5 minutes (09:25:36-09:26:57 UTC+8)

Cost

Not metered (subscription agent); no paid APIs, no purchases

Re-verify by

2026-11-19

How to cite

TriedAgents, "Find the cheapest shop for one product (AC coil foam cleaner)", partly reproduced, checked 2026-10-20, https://triedagents.com/cases/cheapest-shop-for-one-product/